


ten words (do not make a love poem)

by glim



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fever Dreams, Inspired by Poetry, M/M, Memories, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 05:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10757892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: "Bucky," Steve says. And finally, finally, he knows somehow that they're going to be alright, that what they lost is not too great for them to recover what they need from each other.





	ten words (do not make a love poem)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [R00bs_Teacup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/R00bs_Teacup/gifts).



> Written for the following poetry month prompt from a generous tumblr anon:
> 
> ... as though nothing we’ve  
> ever touched wants to stay in the earth,  
> the patient artifacts waiting, having been lost  
> or cast away, as though they couldn’t bear  
> the parting...  
> ~ from "What the Frost Casts Up," by Ed Ochester - for steve/bucky.
> 
> Other poems alluded to in the piece cited in the endnotes.

_i._

"Break the first one." Steve hands the paper back without reading the words. Each one of them manages to hold the weight of memory, somehow. "So that he suffers as little as possible. But if that doesn't work, just go down the line and keep trying."

Next to him Bucky shifts, the movement infinitesimal and brief, a faint catch of breath, the brush of fingertips at the edge of his hand. 

The doctors don't offer him the paper; they know Bucky won't (can't) look at the words, won't acknowledge them, printed in stark black and white, no matter the language. Bucky glances at the doctors, then at Steve, and nods.

"Listen to Steve," he says, his voice low and rough with disuse. He looks at Steve when he talks, searching for reassurance-- _no_ , something else, something bigger than that. 

Something bigger than the both of them, Steve fears, and his fear catches in his throat like a shard of glass. It sticks, sharp and painful, and he has to look away lest it cut too deep inside him. His hand finds Bucky's though, and he holds it tight and safe in his own. 

"The first one," Steve repeats. 

He's trying so hard to be selfless, to make whatever he can easier for Bucky, but his own longing sticks in his chest, like glass, like ice, fine-pointed and sharp, and he knows he will not be able to ease the pain on his own. He wants to say, _I'm doing this for you_ , and when he says it, he knows it'll mean, _I'm doing this for me, too, and that's not the same as doing it for us._

Bucky gives another little nod and his fingers slip between Steve's, careful and cautious at first, then more secure when Steve tightens the grip that he has on Bucky. 

*

His hand is still cold. 

Steve raises Bucky's hand to his mouth and presses his lips to the palm. They bought him out of cryogenic stasis so slowly this time, so carefully, but he still shivers in the morning when he wakes up. 

It took two weeks for the best scientists and doctors in Wakanda, the best in the world, to bring him out of cryo in a way they had hoped would be the least traumatic. 

Two weeks before they even let Steve see him. 

Two years and two weeks. 

Steve kisses Bucky's palm again and closes his eyes when Bucky slides his hand to cup Steve's cheek. 

"Hey," he says, "c'mere." 

His voice is low and rough, but there's a drawn-out warmth beneath it that reminds Steve of winter Sunday mornings, frost at the edge of the bedroom window panes, Bucky's face nuzzled into the back of his shoulder. Bucky, kissing the nape of his neck, telling Steve to go back to sleep at the same time, murmuring warmth and endearments over his skin. 

Turning his face into Bucky's hand, Steve closes his eyes and tries to remember everything: the last touch, the last time, the first time, the way he used to tug Bucky awake early in the morning in the summer to kiss him and kiss him before he had to go to work with the sunrise. 

He traces the tip of his tongue over Bucky's wrist, just over the pulse point, and feels his own heart thrill to feel its steady throb. 

"Bucky," Steve says. And finally, _finally_ , he knows somehow that they're going to be alright, that what they lost is not too great for them to recover what they need from each other. 

"I was thinking," Bucky says, sliding his fingers through Steve's hair, and pulling him in closer. "About how you used to turn aside, just a little, when I'd want to kiss you, like you were... not really shy, you were never shy. Like you weren't sure it was really going to happen." 

"I never did that." Steve leans into the kiss fully this time, closing his eyes and sinking into the press of Bucky's chest against his. 

"Oh, you did. Oh god, how you did, almost shy, pulling me closer to you every damn time." Bucky smiles the next time he brushes his mouth against Steve's and his hand slips to the nape of Steve's neck. "Of all the things to remember..." 

"You're making all that up." Steve laughs, though, because he finally feels like he can. 

"I want that," Bucky says, "that little glance away, I want that, and I want this, too, the way you look at me right before you kiss me." 

Two year and two weeks, and Steve's been here a month now with Bucky, and this is the first time he's laughed, the first time he's pressed Bucky's hand to his mouth, the first time he's felt Bucky's skin flush with the near feverish-warmth of want. 

"You've got it, it's all yours, Buck." 

*

"Sometimes," Bucky says, his fingers soft and still on Steve's chest, "I think about running away. About how there wouldn't even be anything for us to leave behind." 

Steve feels tears prick behind his eyes, hot and sudden. "I used to want to give you everything back they took away, that's all I wanted." 

Bucky kisses Steve's shoulder and leans in to nuzzle the center of his chest, then rests his head on Steve's chest over his heartbeat. "We're more than all that, though." 

The tears burn behind Steve's eyes a second longer, then slip out as he presses his face into Bucky's hair. He's not sad, not really, but he feels empty and wrung out, like he's ready to start over again. 

"I know." Steve blinks away the tears when Bucky shifts to look up at him, and shakes his head when Bucky frowns. "We've always been more than that." 

Bucky gives a nod, and rests his head against Steve's chest, stays close until they're both heavy and warm with exhaustion. 

He'll be here when Bucky wakes up, and he'll kiss him awake, and maybe he won't be here every morning, maybe Bucky won't need him here every morning. 

They'll be more than alright. They're home. 

 

 _ii._

He traces Steve's face, over and over and over, trying to memorize it, trying to remember the way Steve would do the same thing, draw people's faces over and over again, until he knew every curve, every smile. 

He's pretty sure Steve drew pictures of him on lost scraps of paper. Ripped off edges, pencil smudged on both sides, precious, left to blow through the empty alleys of Brooklyn after they both left. 

"I should've come back for you."

"Steve," he says, and god, his voice feels wrong, like it grates against his throat. "No." 

But there's something there, something he can barely hold on to, and he so he says it again: "Steve, no, don't do this." 

Steve shakes his head and closes his eyes when Bucky's fingertips touch his eyebrows. "I lost you. They took you away from me, and then they took you apart." 

The feeling flickers in Bucky's chest again and he tries to grasp it, hold it between the beating of his heart. "What about you, what they did to you." 

"I asked for it." 

"No." Bucky rubs the edge of his thumb over the rise of Steve's cheekbone, finds the curve of his ear. Still the same, still the same boy who drew Bucky's face a dozen times over in one night. "Not all of it." 

Steve turns aside, away from the touch, and _god_ , he looks tired. Seventy years, and he carries every single one of them in his eyes, and wears a crown of handmade nails, rusted and useless. 

 

 _iii._

"Stevie," Bucky says, in that expansive way he has after a couple drinks or on payday, "Got you dinner." 

Payday, then. Steve looks over from the sofa with a smile. He has a heavy, dull headache, right behind his eyes, bad enough he can't read or draw. "Don't call me that." 

Bucky walks the few steps to their tiny kitchen, then the few steps back to the sofa, where he sits down on the floor. A cool, damp cloth settles on Steve's forehead, and Bucky's fingers slip inside his shirt. "Okay, dollface." 

"Shut it," Steve says, and hardly means it. 

\- 

"Did you ask for it?" Bucky touches Steve's face, touches his chest, traces the taut muscles in his abdomen, measures the breadth of his shoulders now that they're broader than his own. 

"Yeah." Steve looks away, glances aside, not sure if he wants Bucky to like the way he looks or not. 

-

He turns eighteen, his ma passes away, he moves in with Bucky. Everything blurs together and Steve cannot hold onto any of it. 

Maybe it didn't happen that way, maybe he didn't do any of those things, maybe the dizzy fog of memory isn't one he's meant to figure out. 

A cool hand presses to Steve's forehead and he reaches up, thinks about saying his name, hoping against hope. 

"M'okay..." 

"You're definitely running a fever," a voice says. "You can tell me how okay that is later, when you can actually walk away and I don't have to carry you." 

Sam, Steve thinks, and nods, holds back the pain that wants to catch in his chest. 

-

Bucky leans in, kisses his bruised lip, and draws back with a smile. 

"Okay," Steve says, and the cut on his lip stings. "I asked for that." 

-

"You wanna go out tomorrow?" 

Steve shifts in bed and sifts his fingers through Bucky's hair. He needs to get it cut; it's summer, and even though he slicks it back in the morning, by evening it's damp with sweat and falling into his eyes. 

"Hm?" Bucky nuzzles in against Steve's stomach and says something fond, indecipherable otherwise, and then looks up. "Boardwalk?" 

"Yeah. Yeah, okay." Steve runs his fingers through Bucky's hair again and brushes it off his face. 

-

"Did you ask for it?" Bucky asks him, and his face is ghostly pale, hair falling in his face. 

Steve reaches out to touch him, but he disappears into the snow and ice, ever cold. 

"Not this, never this." 

-

He wakes Bucky before the sun is even up, before the cool summer morning becomes an unbearably hot afternoon. 

"It's Sunday," Steve says, hands Bucky a cup of coffee, kisses him on the shoulder, noses through his hair and kisses him again. "You still takin' me out today?"

"Not this early," Bucky mumbles into his coffee. He takes a few more sips before reaching around Steve to put the cup on the bedside table. As he leans away, his arm wraps around Steve's waist. "C'mere, dollface..."

Steve tumbles back against the pillows, laughing and protesting. 

The day's already warm by the time they leave their apartment. 

-

It all comes back, resurfaces, and Steve is hot and cold at once, his skin burning as he shivers against the blankets. 

He wants to put it back. Can't he put it all back, box it up neatly, and let time and heaven tick around the earth to keep it all safe for the next time they're both ready? 

There's bitter medicine, and then a cool drink, and he can hear Natasha and Sam talking outside the room. Low voices. 

Sickroom voices. 

He remembers. He never asked for this. 

\- 

"Don't turn away," Bucky says. He touches the side of Steve's face. 

-

Salt-spray and sun-warmed skin. Steve presses his mouth to Bucky's neck and breathes in the scent, the warmth, smell and taste of sweat. 

He falls asleep with his face pressed into Bucky's chest, convinced that deciding they have nothing to lose has given them the greatest freedom of all. 

-

He knows he's dreaming because Bucky is sitting next to him. Metal arm, hair falling in his face, eyes the blue-grey shifting color of ice and brackish water. 

"Did you ask for this?" 

Bucky lowers his head, lashes a dark shadow against the pale skin of his cheek. 

Steve touches his face and shivers; he cannot stop shivering. 

-

Bitter medicine that catches in his throat; Steve coughs and splutters, trying to swallow it down, he knows he's supposed to be able to do that. His throat burns and his chest aches, and swallowing feels like the hardest thing he's ever had to do after breathing. 

Then, it's finished, and there's a something sweet and cool to drink. The fire in his throat dies down, he can breathe again, he stops coughing. 

"Thank god, Stevie," Bucky says. He presses a kiss to Steve's forehead and rests his own against Steve's for a few seconds. 

"... hate when y'call me that," he says in a voice that sounds rusty and raw. 

He can feel Bucky's smile against his skin.

-

This is how it's going to end: the fire beneath his skin, burning his blood too hot and his eyes too bright; the ice, pulling him back down, filling his lungs, a shard, caught in his throat, unable to melt, the taste of blood on his lips, a touch, gentle, brushing the pain and blood away.

-

The Smithsonian present Steve Rogers with a box and an inventory: 

Letters, books, drawings from an art class he took when he was seventeen. 

(He wonders how he ever managed to collect so much paper when it always seemed so scarce during those years.) 

He donates it back to the museum lest it all get buried with him. 

-

Bucky's hand skirts the edge of his ribcage down to his stomach, then back up to his shoulder, to touch the side of his face. 

"Are you still my--" Bucky's voice drops before he asks the question. 

Steve looks back at him, nods into the cup of his palm. "Yes, yes, always." 

The quiet stretches between them, tenuous, and then Bucky smiles. "Nothing else matters, then." 

-

He looks at Steve and he knows. Steve can see it in his eyes (ice, and brackish water, the rainy mornings in the army camp, the sun glinting off the ocean in Coney Island). 

He'll know Steve. He'll remember. 

\- 

When Steve opens his eyes, everything hurts. His head, his chest, his limbs, his throat, his eyes. 

"Hey," Sam says. "You awake?"

Steve nods. The fever's gone, and so are the dreams. 

 

 _iv._

If he leaves before daybreak, when the sky is still dark, if he times it perfectly, it feels as if no time has passed at all. If he leaves while the city has settled into its subdued roar, the rush of activity muted by the night hours still, he can almost imagine he's home. 

He crosses the bridge from Manhattan into Brooklyn, slowing his run down to a pace that makes time feel as if it's out stretching before and behind him, infinite. 

As the sun begins to creep over the horizon, he can pretend that his city looks the same, and that time has crept slowly to tick a heaven around the stars over New York City.

 

 _v._

He's delirious by the time they find him, faint with loss of blood, paralyzed with cold. He's aware enough to know that whatever touches him from now on will only cause him pain. 

His last thought, before the searing cold and the numbing heat, when he can't remember his own name anymore, is of Steve. 

Always Steve, the only one that mattered, the only name he can recall. At his back he can only hear the rattle of bones as time runs out, but he remembers Steve.

He thought they'd have time; he thought that world had been big enough for them, that the sun would rise and the sun would set and he would come home to Steve. 

 

 _vi._

Steve makes the one beer he orders for himself last the whole evening. He buys Bucky two drinks, though, and feels the tension in his own shoulders relax when he sees some of the anxiety clear from Bucky's eyes. 

For the past few weeks, he's felt as if they stood at the knife edge of the war, at the fine point when life would decide what to do with them, keep them or cast them away. 

"I wish you hadn't seen any of this," Bucky says. "That you never found out how much death, how so it takes so many. I wanted to save you from it, but you came for me instead."

"Well, I guess I owed you one." 

Bucky smiles down into his drink, and lets his shoulder press against Steve's as they sit at the back of the bar. They wait until it's dark to walk back to Steve's room, and they push a chair under the doorknob before touching, hands and mouths and the indefinable urge to want to be as close as possible. 

_I'll save you again and again, count up all the times, I'll do it nine more times for an even ten_ , Steve thinks, and presses his mouth to Bucky's neck and to his chest, kisses his way past the new-formed scars on his chest and an old knife-knick on his side. 

 

 _vii._

He likes Steve best this way: smiling, half-asleep, blond hair tousled against the pillow, mouth soft and needy. 

He likes Steve best this way, too: in his uniform, already dressed before dawn, smiling over his shoulder at Bucky. 

He's always loved Steve best, after all, but these are his moments, the ones he can collect and save up for later. Flick through them when he's on patrol in the middle of the night, when he's marching through frost-encrusted mud and beneath a canopy of endless grey clouds. Save them up, precious, until they get home. 

"Stevie," he says, and touches the pad of his thumb to Steve's lower lip. 

Steve's tongue darts out to lick the tip of Bucky's finger but he manages a scowl at the nickname. They've got two days of leave, and Peggy found them a place in England where they could stay, where they could be alone and nobody would ask them any questions. So, Bucky's kept Steve in bed as long as he can, fucked him until he was all soft lips and sleepy sighs, until the quick, hot lick of his tongue against Bucky's fingers was all it would take to make him want Steve all over again. 

They deserve this, Bucky thinks, if nothing else, they deserve the harmlessness of loving each other as much as they can. 

 

 _viii._

He shivers the whole night after they bring him back to camp. Steve can't tell if he's scared or cold, or neither of those two things, but something worse, something he won't be able to cure. 

So he wraps himself around Bucky, keeps his arms tight around Bucky's waist, tucks his face into Bucky's neck and holds him until the shivering stops. 

Bucky looks at him the next morning, his eyes clear and blue. "What they did to me--" 

"It doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything important." 

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut and trembles, but the shivering doesn't start again. "I'm not the same." 

"No, and neither am I," Steve's words come slow, steady, he forces them into an even pace. "We're not the same." He tries not to think of the pile of sketches left in their old bedroom, of the boy who drew them, the other boy who left that room so long ago.

"Doesn't it matter?" 

"No," Steve says again, and "no, no, no," his mouth pressing to Bucky's, desperation clawing at the back of his throat, as if they could not be close enough. 

 

 _ix._

"Let me do it right, this once," Bucky says against the fluttering beat of Steve's heart under his lips. "One more time, before I leave?" 

Steve nods, and Bucky swears he's biting his lip. Maybe biting back tears, but damnit, Bucky already sobbed his heart out against Steve's neck, crying into the warmth of his body and coming with a sob he swore Steve wrenched from deep inside him. 

"You always..." Steve gasps, his body arches, taut and slim and strong, against Bucky's mouth. 

"Not always, but I try, you know..." 

"I know you, I know how you ..." The cry that comes from Steve's mouth is sharp, like it catches in his throat, and his hips jerk up off the mattress when Bucky leans in close. 

For a split second, he thinks of his uniform, pressed and ready to be put back on, he thinks of Steve's hands on his chest, proud and jealous all at once. He looks down at his own hands and how they bracket Steve's hips, perfect, and how Steve pushes up against the way Bucky tries to hold him down. 

Thinks of the busted lip he came home with how many summers ago, and how the night was too warm and quiet for Bucky to pretend any longer. 

"I'm going to come home to you, in the end, when it's all over, I'm coming home," he whispers against the angle of Steve's hip, makes a promise that he would etch into his own skin if he could. 

 

 _x._

Steve drops down onto the fire escape and crosses his arms over his chest. His face throbs, dull and constant, where he got cuffed a few good times. He's pretty sure his lip is split, but he's stopped tasting blood, so it must not be that bad. 

The summer air weighs warm against his skin inside, but outside a soft breeze filters through the heat, carrying the quiet whine of the High Line trains. Steve closes his eyes against the dull throb of pain and listens to the sounds of summer grow quiet, then fade away as the evening melts into night. 

He thinks, maybe, he dozes off from the warmth and the lull of the city. When he blinks his eyes open, the alley behind the apartment is dark, and a square of soft light opens onto the fire escape from inside. The headache's better, but his lip is sore and tender. 

Footsteps, then a quiet _tsk_ when Bucky finds him. 

"Hey," Bucky says, "what did you do to get this?" He frowns at Steve's face. 

Steve shrugs. "Nothing." 

"Yeah, sure. You never do nothing, right?" Bucky tugs off his shirt and drops down next next to Steve. "You were askin' for it, if you got into it with Fannelli again." 

Steve gives another shrug. He can feel the heat of Bucky's skin against his when their arms brush together, can smell the faintest touch of aftershave behind that of sweat. 

"Do you ever just want to leave?" Steve asks. His lip hurts, and it's starting to hurt to have Bucky this close to him, too. "Run away and leave... well, I guess we don't have much to leave behind." 

An odd look comes into Bucky's eyes and he presses his shoulder to Steve's. "Where would I go? Just with you, I guess." 

Bucky leans in, closer, just near enough that he can brush his lips over the point of Steve's shoulder. Steve shivers, then flushes with heat, as if he's suddenly sick with fever, his body uncertain how to keep itself warm or cool enough. 

It's always like this with Bucky, the blushing warmth, and the trembling shiver of desire. The night around them grows a little cooler, the air softer, and Steve gives another shiver when Bucky's lips move against his shoulder, the words ticklish on his skin. 

"You need me to put you back together?" 

"I'm okay." His mouth feels dry and when he licks his lips, he can taste blood again, barely. 

Bucky murmurs Steve's name against his shoulder, touches Steve's face to get him to turn and show Bucky the busted lip. He hisses in reaction, then edges the tip of his finger over the wound. 

"Yeah, you'll be okay. Hate seeing you like this, though..." Bucky's voice goes strange and quiet, like he's scared of talking too loud when it's this quiet at night. 

"I hate how you worry so much." 

"Yeah? Maybe I just want to keep you in one piece." 

"I thought you liked putting me back together." 

They keep their voices low and fond, Bucky's finger brushing against the place where Steve can still taste blood on his lip. 

Except, now he can taste Bucky, too, and when he licks the edge of Bucky's finger, he feels the shivering hot sensation go through him again. 

It's never been like this between them; but, no, it's always been like this, the two of them, poised on the edge, waiting. 

Steve licks his lip again, and looks up at Bucky. His thumb presses against the split in Steve's lip, but gently, and then strokes it even more lightly. 

"Inside," Bucky murmurs. He pulls Steve off the fire escape without another word, then into the sitting room. First, he presses a cool cloth to Steve's face, and then leans in to press a kiss to Steve's hurt lip. "Better?" 

"Almost." Steve leans up into another kiss, closes his eyes, and wonders if it's supposed to feel like this, the easy, steady building swoop in his stomach that presses him closer to Bucky. "Don't... don't go," he says, when Bucky draws away. 

"No. Never." Bucky kisses him again, gentle over the hurt lip, and touches the side of his face when Steve glances down, and aside. "You know I'm yours, always," he says, but small and quiet. "This way, too, now, and more than this, even. We'll be more than this, Steve." 

Steve nods, and holds the moment between them, fragile, before leaning up to kiss Bucky harder, so that he tastes blood and sweat, so that he can commit his desire to memory, so that he always knows how it started between them.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure this sort of fic has been done for Steve/Bucky before, so thank you for reading this attempt! 
> 
> Poems alluded to in the work - 
> 
> "What the Frost Casts Up," Ed Ochester  
> "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out," Richard Siken  
> "The Waste Land," TS Eliot  
> "The Force that Drives the Green Fuse through the Flower," Dylan Thomas  
> "Homecoming," Thomas McGrath


End file.
